


Currents of Air

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Mages and Templars, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 14:29:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10025627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: A brief respite in the Hinterlands leads the Herald and Cassandra to discuss the Mage-Templar war.





	

Cassandra unbuckled her sword belt and settled herself on a mossy stone. Her back and thighs flared with pain, then relaxed as relief washed down her body.

After a long, agonizing morning of cutting through an encampment of renegade Templars, the afternoon had turned blessedly peaceful. The sun was warm and the breeze was cool, and the Hinterlands were quiet with gently swaying pines and fields of wheat. The shadows of swift-moving clouds washed down their hillsides into the valleys over and over, like patterns on the bottom of a seabed. The only sound was the bleating of a herd of wild rams further down the ridge where their party rested, cropping grass and lazily bumping their horns together.

Cassandra's hands, independent from her tired mind, had already unsheathed her sword and laid the blade naked on her lap. The fullers were crusted with blood. She tugged an oiled cloth from her belt and began to clean them. Varric, perched on a rock further uphill, was watching the road to the north. Solas, either to ease a pain in his back or to escape the pain of their company, had lain down on a patch of heather further down, his eyes closed and his staff beside him.

That left her with Trevelyan as he worked the astrarium.

He had been the one to spot it as they trudged along what was, they hoped, the trail of another renegade Templar cell. Without little more than a murmured word, he had struck off the path, clambered up the steep rocks, and thrown his pack and staff down beside the Tevinter artifact. The three of them had exchanged a knowing look, and followed.  

After two weeks of traveling and camping with him, Cassandra would like to say she understood the Herald better than she had when he lay comatose before her in the dungeon at Haven.

But, if she was honest with herself, he was more a mystery to her now than he was then.

He stood with his back to her as he hunched over the astrarium. Trevelyan was tall, lanky even, with a bald head crisscrossed with scars. His gloves were tucked into his belt, and his bare hands, so skillful at manipulating the multiple arms of the device, were striped with old, red burns. There was an academic air to him, as there was to all mages, but the way he traversed the wilderness, without disturbing the grass or making a sound, did not fit in the least with what she knew about Ostwick Circle.

And, after what she had witnessed this morning, her suspicions had been confirmed. 

“You are very good at killing Templars,” she said. Her voice was muffled in the silence. The rough swipe of the oiled cloth down the flat of her sword was swallowed in the gentle rumble of atmospheric pressure over the hillside.

“And you’re very good at killing mages.”  Trevelyan’s eye was pressed to the brass lens of the device. His fingers, long and bony, clicked through the rotating plates and faces of its spherical map. “Funny how that works.”

In another mouth, the words would have been sarcastic. In his, they were merely bored. A traded flourish with an old enemy that no longer frightened or interested him. She wasn’t sure whether to admire it or feel annoyed.

“How old were you when you became an apostate?” she asked.

“Is this another interrogation?”

“I merely wished to know more about you,” said Cassandra, as evenly as she could.

“Why?” he asked.

She studied his profile. His long face was drawn and gaunt, and marked with the frostbite scars of someone who had spent their life sleeping outdoors. In the weeks she had known him, he had not allowed himself to be in the same room with either Cullen or herself if the door was closed. This was the first time she could remember him standing with her back to her. 

She did not expect them to be friends or even more than allies of convenience, but if they were to continue fighting side by side, this tension would not do. 

“I want you to know that, while we may disagree on a great many things, so long as we are both part of the Inquisition, I mean you no harm.” She dug her fingernail into an especially tough patch of blood. “Your apostasy is not in contention. For the moment.”

Nothing. His attention remained focused on the star map. 

"Did you escape the Circle on your own, or were you aided by sympathizers?" she asked.

A breeze flattened a patch of cowslip and wild garlic below them and stirred a dusty, sweet scent into the air. 

"Was your magic mainly self-taught?"

A bumblebee, agitated and slow in the late summer chill, investigated the cracked, faded leathers of Trevelyan's duster. Cassandra watched its lazy flight and frowned. 

"Do you....enjoy astronomy?" 

"Yes," he said.

She blinked. "Well. That's good, I suppose. Yes." She worried a fingernail into the oiled cloth. "Does....your family enjoy astronomy?"  

“No family,” he said.

“But, you are a Trevelyan—”

“The Trevelyans have not considered me part of their House for a long time.”

“I see.” If there was anything but indifference in his voice, she did not detect it. “That is unfortunate.”

“Why?”

_Why_. That one word over and over. She wasn’t sure why it annoyed her to hear him say it so much. There was something mocking in his tone, as if he truly didn’t expect her to answer, or think her capable of doing so.

“For a family to cut ties with a son just because he has magic…it simply sounds difficult, that’s all.”

Trevelyan pulled his head back from the astrarium and stared at her. The brass eyepiece had left the imprint of a circle around his right eye. 

“Why do you suppose so many families cut ties with their magical children?” he asked.

She felt a swoop of dread in her stomach. It quickly hardened to resolve. 

~~~~“It’s true that some families disown their children because of magic,” she said. “But not all of them do. Many cling desperately to the bond they have, difficult as circumstances may be.”

“Circumstances,” Trevelyan repeated.

“Yes.” She shoved the oilcloth hard down the blade. “Circumstances.”

The wind tugged his tall collar against his face. He stared at her so long that she pretended to become absorbed in the sweat stained leather of her sword hilt, childish and stupid as that may be.

“The Circles need reform, it’s true,” she said, when the silence became too much. “And many suffered unduly because of negligence, but this rebellion was never the answer. We need peace to make things right. Surely you can see that?”

Trevelyan’s eyes were a clear, cold brown. After a moment, he turned back to the astrarium.

“Did you hear about the elvhen rebellion in Halamshiral a few years ago?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, warily. “Empress Celene crushed the rebels and afterward was routed outside the city gates by Gaspard de Chalons. It marked the beginning in earnest of the Civil War.”

“Why do you think those elves rebelled?”

She had never given the incident much thought. Elvhen rebellions were common enough that she was able not to. “Feelings of injustice, I suppose.”

“And do you think their rebellion was wise?” he asked.

“It led to many deaths on both sides,” she said. “And many elves, innocent or not, were killed by the Orlesian army. So, no, I don’t.”

“Innocent.” 

Trevelyan spun a dial on the astrarium. 

“Consider the life of an average elf in Halamshiral before the rebellion,” he said. 

"An elven baker wakes in the morning. His day starts as it always does. He rises in the dark, stretches out the pains in his body, and takes a bucket out into the alienage. He stands with fifty other elves at a pump that leaks and turns the streets to mud. The water is cloudy and tastes like metal. It makes his skin itch. 

"It isn't the only illness that afflicts him. His eyes are rheumy and sore. There's a damp cough in his chest that never goes away. But he gets on with the day regardless, because his family needs to eat. He shoulders bags of flour and barely that are half-rotten and full of mouse droppings from the lower markets. He kneads dough until his fingers crack and bleed. He works from sunrise to sunset for a few coppers, then turns around and buys stringy vegetables and moldy meat for his children.

"It's not a bad life, he supposes. There are people who have it worse. Everyone who isn't a noble has aches and pains and lives a short, bitter life in the dirt. Even a human baker goes through much of the same. 

"Unlike the human baker, however, every day the elf wakes with the creeping feeling that he's been trapped.

"He thinks about the life his father had, and how it seems as small and sad as his own. He looks at his children and aches at the injustice of how they will suffer the same hardship as him. Whenever he tries to think of a way to make things better, he hits a wall. There is no way out.

"He can't take an apprenticeship or join a guild. He cannot apply to a university, join the city guard, or buy and sell food in the upper markets. The alienage is always under curfew. There are taxes in place that charge per wagon of goods brought into the city, and thus target the poor like himself who can only afford to hire trains of smaller wagons. The world he lives in is run by humans, and there is nothing he can do to change it.  

"From the beginning of his life to the end of it, he is stuck in bad health, illiteracy, and poverty. Every rule and law demeans him. The guards refuse to patrol the alienage and ignore the elves when they report a crime. When an elf is beaten or raped, nothing is done, because the judges are human, and no magistrate in the city would ever take the word of an elf. Even better, the Chevaliers ride into the slums at night and slaughter the first elf they find, to celebrate their knighthood." 

“It comes as no surprise then, when one day, the baker snaps.

"Maybe it's one thing that pushes him over. More likely, it's a thousand 'one things.' After having a boot on his neck every day of his life, after enduring every possible humiliation and violation the humans can heap on him, something inside him finally says _enough_. He picks up a rock and throws it.

"A bold thing, that. His friends and neighbors are inspired by it. They throw rocks as well. Break a window or break a skull, it doesn't matter. After disregarding the elves all their lives, it's a handful of rocks that finally get the humans' attention.   

"Things move quickly in a way they never have before. The city mobilizes. The guards crack down. They make mounted patrols and sweep through the alienage. Any sign of resistance is a sign of aggression, and that just makes the elves fight harder. The Chantry cries for peace, the law demand order, the nobles of the city decree that this threat to the common decency be put down.

"What can the baker do? He fights without training. He hides in the gutter from those who hunt him. He endeavors with a fierce hope that because things are different, that means things are changing.

"They're not, of course. Because the empress is not an elf, and never will be. 

"She sees this pitiful little rebellion as not a plea of the weak, but as an affront to her personal power. How can she make a show of force when she can't even keep a few hundred elves in line? How can she keep sitting on her throne if the pointed ears that prop it up keep squirming and complaining? 

"And so, a few days later, the Orlesian army rides into Halamshiral and burns the alienage to the ground.

'They slaughter every emaciated, malnourished man, woman, and child they can find. The baker's children are cut down by imperial horses and swords. His friends and neighbors in their homemade armor are punched full of arrows and bolts. The houses and taverns they lived in their whole lives are soaked with kerosene and lit while the sick and old beg for mercy from their beds. The elves break and flee and die screaming in a matter of hours, and the Empress deems this dire threat to the empire dealt with. 

"Life returns to normal. The humans of Halamshiral breathe a sigh of relief. They pick up their jobs, kiss their children goodnight, and thank the Maker that the elves have been placated and peace reigns once again.

"Meanwhile, the elven baker, alone now in the world, goes back to living in fear, because he never had peace to begin with.”

The wind swept down the hillside and darkened the grass as it brushed over it. Cassandra wasn't sure when her hands had stopped moving on her sword. Trevelyan's own still tuned the delicate instruments of the astrarium. She had never heard him speak so many words at the same time before.   

"Elves are not mages," said Cassandra.

“No, but if I’d told a story about mages, you wouldn’t have listened, would you?”

She was struck with the sudden, wild desire to hit him. It flared hot inside her, then subsided. The was no more blood on her sword, but she continued to oil it anyway. 

"Magic is dangerous regardless of personal intention, and balance is not the same as oppression. The Circles must change, not be torn down."

"Yes, because there were so many avenues for change before. Seeker."

Cassandra clenched her jaw. “War isn’t the answer.”

“Neither is your peace,” he said.

“Oh? And your peace would be so much better?”

“I’m an apostate mage who escaped the Circle when he was twelve. The world, including you, would kill me before it gave me peace.”

Something clicked into place inside the astrarium. A beam of blue light shot out of its base. Varric squawked and fell off his perch. The rams fled in panic, sweeping down lower into the valley in a red and white froth of bleating and thundering hooves.

"That and the first one triangulate a location." Trevelyan bent down and slung his pack over his shoulder. "Now we just need to find the third one." 

"I'm sure it'll take rank among our long list of priorities," said Cassandra drily.

His kicked his staff up and caught it. As he arranged his gear, she took in the deep, gouging scars that covered his head, then stared down at her reflection in her now clean sword flat. 

All her life, she had hunted and killed apostates. Many were monsters. Others, she was less certain about. The man in front of her, as far as she could tell, had spent all his life running, and fighting, and protecting others from people like her. He fought Templars with an ease that was frightening, but neither did he hesitate to stop and help a peasant on the side of the road, nor to offer a refugee his own waterskin.  

Since the Conclave, she had questioned why the Maker had sent a mage to them in their darkest hour. 

Perhaps the question was the answer. 

"The world is not the same as it was before," she said at last. Her sword _hssssped_ as she slid it back into its sheath. "I will not pretend to agree with much of what you say, but, perhaps now is the time to listen, rather than provide answers for those we have failed."

It was almost gratifying, the way he twisted about to raise an eyebrow at her.  

"Oh?" Cassandra snorted. "You weren't expecting courtesy?"  

"Not particularly, no."

"Then I will do better in the future." Cassandra creaked up and kicked her legs back to stretch them. "That is all we can do."  

Varric scowled as they trekked along the ridge to his location. He rubbed his backside and checked Bianca for scratches. Solas rose in his usual silence, sweeping his hand once down his tunic, then fell into step behind them. Loose pebbles and gravel hissed under their boots as they skidded carefully down the hill.  

From there, they preceded as before. The smell of smoke, for once, was faint on the wind. Lupins tapped against each other in the gentle breeze, and spotted butterflies opened their wings on patches of shivering white yarrow and primrose. A comforting, barnyard warmth rose off the piles of ram dung, and the trail sloped meanderingly up a knoll into stands of oak and alder. 

The knot of tension between herself and Trevelyan had loosened slightly.  

Not entirely, but enough that it wasn't distracting or painful to walk alongside him. She had not realized how exhausting it was avoiding each other's gazes until neither of them no longer cared.

"What were you two jabbering about back there?" asked Varric, glancing up at them suspiciously.

Cassandra scoffed at the same moment Trevelyan shook his head. "I'm sure you'll hear the encore soon enough."  

There would be no easily solutions for this, or anything now. But, she thought, her face close to the broad slant of Trevelyan's shoulders and the pine resin scent of his skin, it was a start.  


End file.
